Reading the “about” section of Marcel Swann‘s official website, there is a sentence that tries to encapsulate the meaning of his photographic production. The sentence is taken from La Maine Coupée, a collection of stories experienced by the writer Blaise Cendras during the First World War. In a few lines, the writer relates a devastating event such as war with poetry, regardless of the physical consequences of being a soldier or a poet.

“The profession of a warrior is an abominable and scarred thing, like poetry.”

Similarly, it is impossible to think that photography does not leave scars, that the profession of photographer can enjoy a detachment from emotions. Seeking them out in the shots of Marcel Swann – a Brazilian artist based in Milan – requires an effort of interpretation, the desire to see in the naked bodies a story to be viewed not as a smooth surface but as a body on which to feel the calluses with the fingers and look at the tattoos.
Free self-expression leaves scars, or at least shows the effects of a story in which the only thing ordinary is the unexpected, the unfastened clothes that are not known to fall down the body, and a perspective that will never be the same as the eyes of the subjects portrayed.